Clinging to Disempowering Facts

I am experiencing, more than ever, the impact of clinging onto the “facts” of who I am. I caught myself in the middle of a disempowering habit and forced myself to shift my direction in that moment.

I was returning a message to a friend online who was offering me a lot of encouragement and support for sharing my secret online, stepping into my truth, and making progress in big areas in my life.

Almost immediately my message went towards deflecting some of that encouragement and support, going on about “how other areas of my life weren’t making much progress” and other things that essentially indicated I wasn’t happy, despite sharing that secret that I had been harboring for years.

I was mid-message and I internally I went…

“No, wait a minute. That may be technically true that I’m not making progress in select areas of my life. But I did just open up about something really deep and personal, something I’ve hid for years. I did just spend around a month really listening to my heart. I have been spending a lot of time going inward and trying to understand myself.”

And my internal dialogue continued for another moment…

“How is this helpful for me to continue to whine and complain about not making progress in my life? How is it helpful to keep justifying to myself for being quiet and shy all the time? Even if some of those facts are “true,” how is that actually helping me? Am I benefiting myself by sharing those facts and thinking about them on a regular basis? Is it not also true that I have made progress? And more importantly… Isn’t it true that by saying those things, I am perpetuating that situation in my life for another moment, another day, another month, another year?“

I really sat with that for a couple of minutes and hit backspace on everything I was writing. I could still feel that pull to justify the perceived “truth of my situation” and lean on those thoughts in my head that clawed at me to say, “but I still have THIS and THAT problem.”

I restarted with a thank you. And I took a moment to be selfish and to recognize and step into all of the things she was highlighting about my growth these past few days and weeks.

It was as though, in that moment, a fog had lifted and I was stepping into a more empowering state of mind. It felt a lot better to think and talk from this way, rather than what I had been doing on default and autopilot for so long. It’s what Kyle Cease talks about with “what feels Light and what feels Heavy.”

I could spend all day arguing and confirming all of the “facts” of my life, but that is not actively orienting me towards a lifestyle that I want. Each time I say one of those “facts,” it not only perpetuates that fact, but I am simultaneously spending my TIME and ENERGY on perpetuating it. And each time, it depletes my mental energy and capacity to move forward in a productive way.

I could just decide not to say those things. Whether they’re true in all facets or not does not matter: not saying them does not make me a liar. When I choose not to say them, think them, or believe in them, I am simply choosing not to continue down a path that is destroying me.

This is what Jordan B. Peterson talks about with his message to “stop saying things that make you weak.”

Because, as he explains in one of his lectures (below), saying things that make you feel weak end up disaligning you from the core of your being. The more you say things that are “as true as you can say them,” they can align you with the depth of who you are.

The moment I step down a path that makes me feel much more empowered is the moment I feel more inclined to do the things that will actually help me create the life I want to live and become the person I want to be. I may have to practice this regularly and be vigilantly aware of when I am saying things that make me weak out of habit, but I know this is the way I will keep myself on the path towards that ideal life.

In a nutshell: whether or not those things I wanted to habitually reply to my friend were true, saying them would make me weak. It would perpetuate my situation instead of empowering me to become better. So I’m choosing not to say them.

And I’m striving to move forward, to the best of my ability, to stop saying, thinking, and doing anything that makes me feel weak like that. I don’t have to say anything different, I can simply start by not saying those things.

It’s worth the pause to ask ourselves, is what we’re saying making us weak?